Participation in 7th ARC and 63rd IEC Meeting of ICID

The 7th Asian Regional Conference(ARC) and63rd International Executive Council (IEC) meeting of International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage(ICID) was organized at the Grand Adelaide Convention Centre, in Adelaide, Australia from 24 to 29 June,2012.

As per the decision of Ministry of irrigation (MoI), delegates of five officials from Nepal, Mr. Rabindra Karmacharya, Joint Secretary of Ministry of Irrigation, Mr. Khom Raj Dahal, Director General as well as Chairman, Nepal National Committee of ICID(NENCID), Mr. Uttam Raj Timilsina, Deputy Director General as well as Member Secretary, NENCID, Mr. Niranjan Dev Pandey, Project Director and Mr. Bashu Dev Lohanee, Senior Divisional Engineer of IWRMP from Department of Irrigation (DoI) participated in the conference.

More than 500 delegates from 56 different countries participated in that mega event. Parallel with the conference, an impressive trade show displaying products and services of over 100 irrigation related companies, equipment suppliers, distributers, showcasing was held. Post technical conference tour was also organized from 29th June to 2nd July as a part of the conference.

At the opening of the conference, Mr. TonyBurke, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Pollution and Communities addressed the conference. President of ICID Dr. Gao Zhanyi delivered a keynote speech on Water and Irrigation for Food security. Mr. Hon Jay Weatherill, Premier of South Australia, Mr. Peter Toome, Chairman of Irrigation Australia Limited (IAL), Mr. Lan Atkinson, CEO IAL and Mr. Thierry Facon of FAO gave speeches on the occasion.

The main theme for the conference was ”Regional Cooperetion for Water and Food Security’’ with 6 sub themes namely: Integrated water Management at basin and district level, Horticulture, Agriculture, Drainage and Flood management, Water for Environment, Regional Co-operation. Focusing on those sub-themes, 200 papers were presented, Speakers from different corners discussed pertinent issues of irrigation and drainage. Similarly four International workshops each on: Adaptive Flood Management, Irrigation, Water Quality and Environmental Flows, Historical Water Sustainability, Country Policies and developments of water for Bio-Energy and Food were also conducted during the conference. Representing Nepal, Deputy Director General Er. Uttam Raj Timilsina presented a paper on Country policy and development of water for Bio-Energy and food.

In the 63rd IEC Meeting held on 28th June minutes of different 15 items and resolutions were approved. Among them, admission of direct members for individual professionals, companies and institutions working or dealing with irrigation, drainage and flood related issues under broad basing strategy of ICID, setting up of irrigation achievement award, seeking ways to support least developing countries and young professionals in ICID, nomination approval of working groups members in different Working Groups (WG’s), organization of the first World Irrigation Forum (WIF) were the main. Regarding nomination of working group member, among 10 nomination sent by NENCID from Nepal only two nominations, Er. Ezee G.C in working group on Young Irrigation Professional Forum (WG-YPF and Er. Uttam Raj Timilsina in working group on Modernization of Irrigation Service (WG-MIS) as well as Task force member on BIO-Energy and Food (TF-Bio-Energy) were accepted and rest are kept as deferred for coming 64th IEC Meeting to be held at Turkey, 2013. Regarding organization of the first World Irrigation Forum (WIF), it is going to be held from 29 Sept to 5th oct, 2013 in Mardin city of Turkey focusing call for paper on four themes: irrigation management under drought conditions, environmental impacts of irrigation and drainage projects, modernization of irrigation infrastructures and services and conflicting water use in different sectors. Technical papers abstracts sharing experiences on those themes are invited up to 1st Nov,2012.